


Of the Red Thistles of the Valar

by NebulousMistress



Series: The Red Book [14]
Category: Stargate SG-1, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen, mention of Charlie - Freeform, personal tragedies, red thistles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24775360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulousMistress/pseuds/NebulousMistress
Summary: The Sangraal killed the Ori. Right? Right?!If the Ori are dead why are the red thistles still causing problems?
Series: The Red Book [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/702042
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Of the Red Thistles of the Valar

**Author's Note:**

> This story doubles as a [Bad Things Happen Bingo](https://nebulousmistress.tumblr.com/post/616692789320810496/here-is-your-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo) prompt fill for Non Consensual Body Modification. Admittedly this is a little tame for my usual body horror fics but it fits in with the rest of the series.

The red thistle sat beneath the fume hood, the gentle currents of air pulling its scent up through a vent in the ceiling to be processed by a dozen HEPA filters, which were then burned after each experiment. It sat in a paper cup moistened with water and a pittance of dirt to keep the root ball covered. The individual red florets of the thistle drooped and waved in the air currents, their red color bright and clear despite the lack of natural light in the fume hood.

Dr. Kenneth Sardoni stripped the chemical filter mask from his face and pulled the latex gloves off of his hands. There was no danger once the thistles were under the fume hood where their scent couldn’t reach anyone. Besides, the Ori were gone. Dr. Jackson had made sure of that.

Strange that reports of red thistles at the gates remained steady. Surely without Priors to spread them the flowers would die out. Especially as no one had figured out how the damned things reproduced.

No one was entirely sure what they smelled like either. Descriptions were less than helpful, everyone saying they smelled like something different. The ergoline compounds at work, most likely. The thistles might not even have a real smell, only the hallucinations they inspired. There were reports that the thistles smelled like tamales, like apple pie, like Christmas, like cookies, like any number of things that made the subject stare off into space and memory.

Nobody ever talked about the memories the thistles inspired.

Dr. Sardoni huffed as he looked at the thistle through the dust-smeared glass of the fume hood. He wasn’t getting anywhere. Maybe…

Self-experimentation was a great and venerable tradition in science. Researchers smarter than him had done this over dumber things. He knew the effects would wear off. He opened the fume hood and drew the red thistle out into the open.

It smelled like…

It smelled like dried chilis and feather dust and fresh squash tossed everywhere by an eager beak, his grandmother’s parrot Lupi who would dance when sang to, who would fly off his perch and wander the house in the middle of the night, who would tear open Twinkies to eat the filling. Sardoni remembered the night he stayed over at his grandmother’s house, heard the screeching in the middle of the night, the thud and the silence and then climbing out of bed to find her at the bottom of the stairs, her neck twisted like…

Dr. Sardoni threw the red thistle back into the fume hood, sank to the floor of the lab, and tried not to scream as he wrapped his arms around his knees and sobbed.

*****

The red thistle sat under a glass bell jar, sealed away from the outside world. Vacuum grease formed a tight seal between the bell jar and the glass plate below it as it sat on the conference table. General Landry kept a healthy distance from the table and its deceptive occupant while less wise individuals clustered around it.

General Jack O’Neill and Dr. Carolyn Lam leaned in close to the glass. O’Neill poked it, just enough to leave a fingerprint. Dr. Daniel Jackson glared at Jack but leaned in just as close. Even Dr. Sardoni regarded the thing with a resigned sadness while Colonel Cameron Mitchell watched from the corner of the table.

“Fire,” Mitchell suggested. “We could kill them all with fire.”

“Only on some planets,” Daniel said. “We don’t want to set fires we can’t control.”

“I’m curious as to why the effects suddenly changed,” Lam mused. “All previous exposures were mostly harmless. They left the subjects somewhat suggestable for a time after exposure but that was easily handled.”

O’Neill snorted. He remembered the ‘I smelled the flowers’ hazing from the last time. Of course this time the Atlantis expedition wasn’t here to add to the exposures.

“The Ori were still ‘alive’ last time,” Daniel realized. “We hadn’t activated the Sangraal yet.” He ran his fingers over the glass, not quite touching it. For a moment he remembered these red thistles, he knew their smell, their true smell. Then the moment was gone.

“You’re telling me that with the Ori gone the flowers smell like tragedy?” Landry asked.

“Who doesn’t have a little tragedy in their lives?” O’Neill mused.

Daniel laid his hand on the glass. He slid the glass ever so slightly in the vacuum grease. A hand grabbing his wrist stopped him. Daniel scowled.

“Don’t give me that look,” O’Neill said. “I know what you were going to do.”

Daniel let himself be pulled away. He took a step back and stood with an almost cat-like air of ‘I did nothing wrong, you can’t prove it’.

“No one should smell that,” Sardoni said, his voice oddly distant. “No one should see her like that.”

“Are you sure you came out of it all right?” Dr. Lam asked.

Sardoni slowly shook his head. “No.”

“That’s not ominous,” Mitchell said sarcastically. “Not at all.”

“I oversaw several controlled exposures before, well, before,” Lam said. “Only one person could smell the thistle at a time. It didn’t matter how close an observer stood, they could never smell what the subject smelled.”

“If you’re saying these things  **choose** a target I’m going to have to go with ‘fire’,” Landry said. “The last thing we need are attack plants that target people with mind control sadness.”

“We need more data,” Daniel said.

“I’m not exposing people to this now,” Lam said. “Maybe before when the smell was mostly harmless but not now. Not anymore.”

O’Neill vaguely listened to the argument brewing around him. The Ori were gone, all but one, and Adria was busy for all eternity in an Ascended catfight with Morgan Le Fay. There were no Priors spreading the red thistles where they tread and yet the flowers remained. The scientists said there was no known way the flowers could spread on their own. Even so they were dangerous. It was one thing to turn marines goofy and unsuspecting townsfolk into willing vessels for religious propaganda. It was something else entirely to dredge up a person’s worst personal tragedy for some unknown nefarious purpose.

O’Neill laid a hand on the glass. He twisted it in the vacuum grease.

“Jack?” Daniel asked.

Only one person could smell the flowers at a time.

O’Neill knew the tragedy he’d revisit. There could be nothing else more tragic than that. He knew how to handle that. He’d handled it before. Better him than anyone else. He was sparing them the pain of their own tragedies.   


“You said it yourself, Danny. We need more data. There’s only one way to know.”

“Jack, don’t!”

The grease seal broke as O’Neill lifted the glass bell jar away. The red thistle seemed to rattle its spines in anticipation as the rest of the room receded away.

Jack lifted the flower to his nose and inhaled.

And gasped.

He smelled green things, cut grass warm in the sun. Fresh dirt kicked up by running feet. Soft oiled leather of a catcher’s mitt. Clean fresh sweat from a young boy’s hair after a game of catch. The very last game of catch, Charlie’s hair under his nose, deep breath, a small warm hand in his…

The horrible note of gun oil like a premonition.

Someone calling his name, so far away.

But it wasn’t important.

He inhaled deeply, trying to fill himself with that scent, clinging to the memory with everything he had. 

He inhaled so deeply the world began to fade…

*****

“Dammit, Jack!” Daniel scolded as O’Neill took the first sniff.

And then something happened he’d never seen before. He’d never seen Jack O’Neill cry. But those were indeed tears and Daniel felt deeply uncomfortable.

General Landry threw up his hands and scowled while Dr. Lam watched with a scientist’s curiosity. Mitchell focused on a spot on the table as though the ring of vacuum grease was the most interesting thing in the world. Sardoni watched with depressed resignation until he noticed the thistle begin to move.

“That’s new,” he mused.

“Unfortunately, no it’s not,” Landry said, not looking.

“Not that,” Sardoni said. He watched the thistle move, the red spines of the flowerhead curling in to caress O’Neill’s face, focusing on the teardrops.

Drinking them.

The base of the florets began to swell. The flower was maturing, the receptacle swelling beneath the florets that greedily drank Jack's tears.  


“General O’Neill? You need to put the flower down and then we all need to get out of here.”

“Oh no, don’t tell me,” Daniel pleaded. “It’s doing something.”

“It’s gonna spore, it’s gonna spore right now.”

Daniel looked at the flower and the swollen thistle head, the calyx beginning to crack. “Jack, put it down!”

O’Neill opened his eyes and it seemed like he didn’t see any of them. Maybe he didn’t see anything. Maybe he saw exactly what he expected he’d see. “Everybody out,” Landry ordered.

“But…” Daniel let himself be dragged away.

After all, the red thistles may be evil plants that made people relive tragic memories but it was just a plant. They could put General O’Neill through decontamination after the conference room was quarantined by the nice janitors who knew how to wield all the good HEPA filters.

He’d be fine.

*****

Jack O’Neill opened his eyes.

The first thing he noticed was how very wrong everything was. The last thing he remembered was…

Well.

But this wasn’t that. The smells were gone, replaced by a subtle sad sweetness that inspired a base feeling rather than a direct memory. He laid on soft grass, dew clinging to the blades. This… wasn’t the SGC. This wasn’t even the park near his old home. He sat up and looked around.

Great trees surrounded him, their branches bare as though the dead of winter had fallen. He’d never seen trees quite like this, trees with strange gray bark as smooth as glass. He had a sinking feeling that fell to its fullest as he looked up to an unfamiliar sky.

O’Neill knew the Milky Way from dozens of angles, had seen it in the skies of a hundred alien worlds. This… was not that.

There were no stars. At all. The sky held nothing but limitless void extending into eternity. But there was light…

The trees held tiny lanterns. O’Neill got up, ignoring the strange gray robes he wore and his own bare feet, and approached one of the lanterns. It sparkled with a tiny point of light inside like a firefly, at least he hoped it was just a firefly. He hoped it wasn’t what it looked like, a tiny disc of gas and dust swirling around the growing protostar within, a star not yet born with its own collection of infant planets.

“This must be a hell of a trip,” O’Neill said aloud.

“Nothing so simple.”

O’Neill turned at the sound of her voice. At least, it sounded like a woman’s voice, though there was an echoing quality he instinctively did not like and yet adored.

The light of a hundred, a thousand, countless tiny lanterns lent the forest an ethereal glow. A gray shadow in that glow approached him and O’Neill felt the urge to flee, or perhaps to fall to his knees in worship. He stood his ground and did neither.

The shadow coalesced into a woman, slight and thin, almost gaunt. Her long hair fell lank and dull past her waist, silver dulled to gray by some great tragedy. Her eyes held no iris or pupil, only a solid color like the gray of a clouded twilight. Tear tracks stained her face, long dark lines in her nearly colorless skin.

She gave him a wan smile as she approached. Then a moment of fury overtook her and she slapped him.

O’Neill did not expect that. Nor did he expect her strike would lay him on the ground. He shook his head, the sting refusing to fade, and drew himself to a sitting position.

“You did this,” she accused. “You emptied the Halls of Vefantur. You killed the Lady Varda. You weakened the Outer Gates.” She smiled as she sighed in something akin to satisfaction. “The grief among the Firstborn has been unending. You have no idea the depths of my power now…”

O’Neill had a horrible realization. “The Sangraal killed the Ori.”

She laughed, a sound like tears falling into a well. “Not all of us. Our realms are vaster than you know. You sent the Sangraal into one galaxy. Only one.”

O’Neill stood up, the better to face down this misty-eyed monster. 

The better for her hand to snatch out and grab the side of his face. Her grip felt like cold steel holding him still as she bent his head to one side.

“We killed you.” O’Neill insisted. “We killed you!”

“Come see what you did,” she snapped. She dragged him to the edge of the forest and threw him to the ground. A city stood far below in a valley. The city stood empty and bereft, a testament to dead memories. Yet there was movement, a few lost souls standing alone and confused in the emptiness. A single lantern shone in the darkened city, its owner’s cries begging to be heard.

“At least we killed a lot of you,” O’Neill amended. The empty city gave him a spark of satisfaction. If the Sangraal could do that then it could easily take out this misty little tart. All he had to do was get Danny to construct another. And find out where the Ori were hiding out now.

“They were innocents,” she insisted. “Brought here since the worlds were young! Their children came here and their children’s children. Their voices would have sung the Second Music. Now they have been silenced. You will pay for this, Jack O’Neill.”

“I bet I will,” O’Neill drawled.

She snorted and tossed him against a tree. A lantern swung above him and fell into his lap.

“The Kindler is dead,” she warned. “Without her to spark the stars the universe will die. Only by luck did your mis-named Vala birth one with Varda’s talent. It will take time but Adria will learn. Once her opponent is defeated we will have all the time we need.”

O’Neill looked at the protostar in the lantern, its disc split where a large planet grew and ate a furrow in the gas. He laughed. “I knew you were all nuts but I had no idea. You believe it. You actually **believe** your own weird religion.”

She looked down at him, disdain flowing as surely as her own misty gray robes. “I sang the First Music that created your universe. It is not ‘belief’ when it is true.”

O’Neill smirked. “I know what really happened,” he said. “You and the Ancients had a difference of opinion, nothing more. They didn’t delude themselves into thinking they were gods. That’s what makes them stronger than you ever could be.”

Disdain turned to thoughtfulness then to a harsh smile. “I will enjoy breaking you,” she said. She pointed to the valley below, devoid of movement and life. “Your voice will be the first I take. I will make you my own, Jack O’Neill. You will Sing the most beautiful sorrow.”

“Clearly you’ve never heard me sing,” O’Neill said, deadpanned.

She smiled and took the lantern from his grasp, dragging him to his feet. “Let me show you what I mean.”

*****

Jack O’Neill stood in the room, not wanting to look in the mirror but refusing to look away.

He had a room in the SGC, VIP quarters on level 25. It saved him from having to go out in public like this, though that kindness could not last forever. He had too much to do, especially now that the Ori were reconsolidating power in the Pegasus galaxy and here in the Milky Way, where the Sangraal couldn’t be used without decimating the Ancients.

Jack couldn’t help feeling like it was his fault. After all, he encouraged the Charade of Atlantis. How was he supposed to know this is what that Charade meant?

The mirror mocked him with his own absent humanity. His own pointed ears were impossible to ignore. The long gray hair falling past his elbows didn’t help matters, especially knowing that it was all cut off during the rather pointless decontamination earlier and grew back within hours. His deep gray eyes stared without pupil or iris, entirely the wrong color, and there was a sense of terrible light glowing from within that he couldn’t see, didn’t want to see.

He almost looked like an elf, yet somehow worse. Sheppard looked like an elf with his pointed ears and his strange way of moving. Jack looked so much worse, like the Ori had. Pale, inhuman, with permanent lines under his eyes like the tracks of tears. He barely recognized himself, he didn't want to.

He heard the door behind him open. The mirror wasn’t lying, not given the reflection of Daniel Jackson and the look of worry on the man’s face.

She'd done this to him.

“I have a hypothetical question,” O’Neill asked. “Hypothetically, if I’ve been told I’ll be forcibly Ascended against my will to Sing in an Ori choir for all eternity, would suicide get me out of it?”

“Doubtful,” Daniel admitted. “Hypothetically.”

O’Neill sighed as he looked back at the mirror and its horrible truths. “Merlin didn’t do you any favors, either,” he said. “They blame you as much as me.”

“They should. I’m the one who made it happen.”

O’Neill looked in the mirror to see the guilt reflected from Daniel’s face, guilt he knew the Ori who called herself Nienna would adore. And he knew he would be the one to deliver her that guilt, as surely as Daniel’s own pointed ears. "I'm sorry, Danny."  


Daniel looked away and didn't answer. Instead he left the room, closing the door behind him.


End file.
